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No Quick Broadway Transfer for ‘The Children’s Hour’

By Patrick Healy October 25, 2010 1:11 pmOctober 25, 2010 1:11 pm

While the theater producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Landis structured their current revival of “La Bete” to close in the West End on Sept. 4 and move unusually quickly to Broadway, where performances began on Sept. 23, don’t expect the same swift transfer for their coming London production of “The Children’s Hour” by Lillian Hellman, starring Keira Knightley (“Pride and Prejudice”), top left, and Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”), bottom left.

Mr. Landis said on Monday that the production would open in early 2011 in the West End for a limited run but that a subsequent move to Broadway would wait until the fall, assuming all goes well in London. The reason: Ms. Knightley has a film to shoot midyear, and Ms. Moss is expected to return to the “Mad Men” set as the copywriter Peggy Olson sometime in the spring. “Mad Men” wrapped up Season 4 on AMC last week; the network hasn’t announced its plans for Season 5, but if past scheduling is any indicator, it would likely begin in the summer.

Ms. Knightley is set to play Karen Wright and Ms. Moss will play Martha Dobie in “The Children’s Hour,” the 1934 drama about an all-girls boarding school run by the two women, whose personal and professional lives are wrecked when a malicious student begins a rumor that the pair is having a lesbian affair. Ms. Knightley would make her Broadway debut with the production; Ms. Moss made hers as the secretary Karen in the 2008-9 revival of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow.”

The “Children’s Hour” production will be directed by Ian Rickson, last on Broadway during the 2008-9 season with a “Seagull” that starred Kristin Scott Thomas and a “Hedda Gabler” that starred Mary Louise Parker.

While many West End productions transfer to Broadway months (or years) after closing in London, Ms. Friedman and Mr. Landis built a financing plan for “La Bete” that involved transferring it immediately to Broadway, essentially capitalizing one production in two places rather than creating a capitalization plan for London and a second for Broadway.

Which is all well and good — but Peggy Olson has somewhere we need her to be in 2011, Broadway or not.